Worldwide demand for energy, especially electrical energy, or electrical power, continues to grow. Domestic energy prices continue to rise and challenges arising from foreign political instabilities, especially with regard to fossil fuels like crude oil, brings uncertainty into future energy prices. At the same time, by certain accounts, known reserves of fossil fuels like crude oil are declining, and may not be renewed in the foreseeable future.
A percentage of the increased demand in electrical power may come from developing countries attempting to add people to community power supplies, as a measurable percentage of the world's population still lives without access to electrical power. This percentage may correlate closely in certain geographical regions with poverty, illiteracy, reduced life expectancy, infant mortality, unsafe drinking water, crop failure, water-borne diseases, and other negative consequences.
Attempts have been made to harness energy from various renewable sources in an attempt to curtail the issues above. For example, certain systems and methods have attempted to generate energy from temperature differentials in bodies of water, such as a lake. These systems generally include a phase change fluid as the working fluid, and thus generally require, e.g., condensers, evaporators, and a phase change fluid finely tuned to change from a liquid to a gas over the relatively narrow temperature differential available. Accordingly, said systems may require a region having extremely consistent temperatures in order to operate consistently.
Accordingly, a system and method for generating electrical power that could operate over a wide range of temperature differentials and/or without the requisite complicated equipment of the prior art would be beneficial. More particularly, a system and method for generating electrical power using an expanding liquid heated using a renewable energy source or using waste energy would be particularly useful.